Cold steel

Yes difinately, but the mind does its own thing sometimes and banality is reality. In one of my wars, the Falklands there has been for some time more vets died of suicide than were killedd in acion, over 300.

After the Falklands I did other things, quiet things for my government. I'm weighed down by the official sectrets act here. But subjectively you can never go to war and then go to peace. The peace is the banal after the intensity and I couldn't live with it, i'm "severely disabled" now, mentally. But after it all.. the falklands and beyond (The secret stuff) I couldn't fit back in, I tried but i'd gone from an environment where death and killing, the war machine is total and its all you live, to come home and go to the pub where people are talking about last weeks soap opera. It's imposssible to equate ever again, reconcile the two realities, so the stronger more emotive sensibility thrives.. War.

When I was finally finished with it all in those days we were given nothing, I saw an army doctor who asked me how I felt? I said fine though I was far from it. He pushed over a jar of pills and said take one a day they'll help. When I got outside and read the bottle they were multi vitamins. It was both tragic and hilarious. PTSD was just becoming recognised in the main stream of psychiatric care. 

I have a bug in the head about PTSD, I know i'll suffer my whole life. But having wound up working in Mental Health myself I've always known that the main factor of PTSD is that at a given moment you must believe you will die. I've been in this position a few times, but what bothers me is that while now there is great care given to veterans... there are thousands of civilians who have this and don't get care, it's as if the military has hi jacked it. But in reality anyone... car crash victims, rape and mugging victims are all very succeptable to it. 

But society only see it as a thing that effects vets. And the care system is weighted that way. If you look at a refferal form for the PTSD clinic the first question is have you served... 10 points for that one and top of the list. Those other thousands off victims are on a waiting list of maybe three years, suffering, often commiting suicide. Terrible.

Thank you Di, I am in no way seeing veterans as overcompensated, we should get all the help available, people die, my friends have died but there should be an equitable solution. Is a rape victim any less traumatised than someone woundedd in action. No. Psychiatrists no this, but there is a politcal gain for polititians to be seen as supporting our armed forces who wade into storrms others can't, and often but not always for the freedom of the opressed. But of course a rape victim is oppressed! 

I had a friend who worked on the prosthetic ward for the army and when a vet wanted a paticular limb, sometimes several types they got it, and the nurse told me they called it a "Sun" leg. Because if the vet was able to present themselvess as not looked after it would be in the sun news paper the next day. 

This is something dear to my heart.. I don't like discussing this but my beautiful, intelligent son, he had a place at Oxford to study medical research and he became ill, without going into ghastly details about GP's misdianosing, he had developed a rare bone cancer, he fought for nine months and we lost him. (Now i'm tearing up) but there are many on the wards with bone cancers in limbs who are cured by the only way... amputation of the malignant sarcoma on the bone, and against the odds some then livee, but i've met, seen and talked with parents battling to get a prothetic for thier child and it's a massive undertaking!

But the odds are never good, 16 families on our teen cancer ward in Leeds LGI, 15 never made it! Going to these services was a terrible thing, and often a massive guilt trip, we were celebrating a young life taken, and all I could think of was my own son. 

But already handicapped with PTSD this finished me... i'm now classed as severely disabled mentally, will never recover, and live on the benefits given. But now nightmares I had about killing, dying and the dead are often replaced by nightmares about my son. The shrinks say they can't unravel it, there is no cure, "multiple trauma issues". They have put me on benefits for life as they recognise there is no cure now. writing is a balm. Often I lose it for months. Locked away in a room with a bed and impossible thoughts of recovery. 

But I have honestly seen amazing bravery on the battle field but to see the bravery of these young people just was amazing. Incredible. Inspiring and heart breaking. I wrote this sitting next to my boy on the waard looking around and it honestly took two or three minutes to write...

Don’t name them

Don’t name them
Too many names
No names
Names can
Be missed
Your name
Their name
So no names
No religion
All faiths die
No colour
Whats colour
No country
No wealth
It doesn’t
Matter
No language
No measure
of intelligence
All tongues
Are stilled
For life's
Accounting

You
Child with
Leukaemia
You are beautiful
You child suffering
Sarcomas
You are
Beautiful
Over there 
Child with
Broken chromosome
You are beautiful
I don’t need your
Label
To know your 
Beauty
I know your beauty
We know
Your beauty
See your beauty
Feel your beauty
Thank you
For sharing
For giving
Your beauty
Your unfathomable
Courage
Allowing us to
Love you.